GAME TWO: Capitals 4, Pens 3 — As Gary Bettman’s Orgasm Subsides, Pittsburgh Stares Down A 2-0 Deficit

Hockey Quiz Time! And you don’t even have to go to Ask.com for the answer (or Google it after you don’t find it on Ask.com).

Q: If you make sure to cover one player in the NHL during one specific situation, which of the following should you choose?

A) Alexander Ovechkin one-timing the puck from the left hash.

B) Joe Thornton behind the net.

C) Mike Richards during your power play.

D) Mark Eaton always.

If you said “A”, you’re wrong! The correct answer is “OBVIOUSLY IT’S FRICKIN’ A DO YOU HONESTLY NEED TO BE TOLD TO COVER GODDAMN ALEXANDER OVECHKIN ONE-TIMING THE PUCK ON THE GODDAMN OFF-WING???” That was the answer we were looking for, caps included.

Sure enough, the Pens twice failed to cover an Alexander Ovechkin one-timer, the first coming on a spontaneous 3-on-2 in which no forwards got back and the defense gravitated towards Viktor “I’m Big And Try For About Nine Seconds A Game” Kozlov instead of the guy who’s scored 121 goals over the past two seasons, and the second coming on one of about 75,000 perfectly clean Capitals special teams face-off wins that resulted in a power play goal an embarrassing FOUR SECONDS into a man advantage.

Penguins, if we really need to go over whether or not you need to watch out for Alex Ovechkin one-timing a puck from the left side when you play against the Washington Capitals, then we might as well just save some time and skip directly to working on your golf swings. Golf swing tip #1: Do not jump into the water hazard with a plugged-in radio. Sounds self-explanatory? Yeah – so is keeping an eye on Alexander Ovechkin when you play the Washington Capitals. Jesus Christ.

– Sweet dive by Ovechkin on the Kunitz penalty though, huh? If Crosby had gone down like that and they showed the replay in the Verizon Center, all of D.C. would still be booing, plus more Caps fans would jump on the bandwagon to join in the booing, and Flyers fans would have reconvened in Wachovia to continue booing as well, and Crosby would be getting ripped on every blog on the internet right now including financial blogs, tech blogs, and this website. The refs barely impacted the game, though; a lot of the penalties for both sides just weren’t replayed on Versus at all and I never saw them, plus the Pens’ power play is bad (anyone else noticed this? I feel like I’m really alone on this one), and Kunitz got away with a really bad cross-check on Varlamov on the Pens’ third goal – “If you can’t score,” Badger Bob once never said, “at least cross-check the goalie in the head when it’s too late for the refs to care.”

– And that brings me to the power play…I feel like mentioning the power play in these recaps is like when someone during a roast finally gets around to the guest of honor, and everyone knows what’s coming… Yes, they scored twice tonight, but the second goal was a semi-irrelevant 6-on-4 goal following that missed cross-check to the Caps’ goalie, and until Dan Byslma stops leaving 4/5 of the power play unit on the ice for the full two minutes (Letang was getting 2-minute shifts tonight too – whoopeee!! Everyone is early-2000s Chris Pronger!!), we’re going to have to continue to put up with man advantages like the jamboree of failure following the Jurcina interference call. Then, the cherry on that shit sundae, Evgeni Malkin took the penalty that led to the go-ahead goal while at the end of an extended power play shift, presumably tired from watching Sergei Gonchar chase the puck behind his net a bunch of times.

– I’ve always felt that commentators overrate the importance of faceoffs to the outcome of a game, unless a team is absolutely, noticeably dominated on them. Tonight, the Penguins were indeed absolutely, noticeably dominated on them, losing 38 of 61 draws (61%) with no individual Penguin winning more than 42% of his draws. The Capitals’ faceoff wins also averaged 9.77 Clean-and-Easy points per draw, which is a stat I made up just now to emphasize how cleanly and easily the Caps won every single faceoff in every single remotely important situation.

– As much as I’ve complained about the Pens’ D, the Capitals did leave Crosby basically untouched on his first two goals. If the Pens had won this game, we’d likely be hearing more about the Caps missing John Erskine’s presence in front of their net. On the TSN coverage, at least, I’m pretty sure ESPN’s 30-second wrapup might focus on Ovechkin a bit more.

– Simeon Varlamov essentially outplayed Fleury for the second straight game (not a slight to Fleury so much as a credit to Varlamov); I don’t wish to revisit this argument here, as we’ll have plenty of time to fill during the offseason, but Varlamov’s success continues to taunt teams who draft goalies really highly or overpay for free agent netminders. Varlamov was a #23 overall pick; I’m not sure what Rick DiPietro, Kari Lehtonen, and Al Montoya are up to right this minute, but they’re not currently playing in the NHL Playoffs, and Marc-Andre Fleury won’t be for much longer barring a Pens defensive surge over four of their next five games. Tim Thomas (217th overall pick), Jonas Hiller (undrafted; international free agent), Cam Ward (25th overall), Nikolai Khabiboulin (thought to be washed-up) and Chris Osgood (was definitely washed up) are all still playing in the playoffs, for the record (and yes, Roberto Luongo, a 4th overall pick who was traded twice). But I digress.

– Was something going on with Max Talbot’s stick? He seemed to be hustling, positioning himself well, and blocking shots, but any time he tried to pass or stickhandle the puck would immediately, spastically turn itself over to the Caps, often in an impossible ‘Talbot just kept it in the Pens’ own zone when the Caps weren’t even trying to” way. Talbot also blocked two shots on the same penalty kill and neither one left the zone or went to a Penguin player. That sequence plus the weird bounce on the Steckel goal (who’s living up to his poster billing, by the way) had me scratching my head, at least in between fits of swearing at Gonchar and Orpik.

– Petr Sykora remains useless, injured or not, and is probably costing himself millions in free agent dollars with his noticable irrelavence.

– My pick of Pens in Six is still extremely mathematically possible. Yep…just call me “Nostradamus.” Seriously, call me on the phone right now and refer to me as “Nostradamus,” because I can foresee the future like Nostradamus claimed to have been able to, as evidenced by my ability to predict this series. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go plug in my radio and go golfing.

– And for good measure, the Pirates also blew a lead in the 8th inning and another one in the 9th to lose to the Brewers tonight.  And the Steelers traded Troy Polamalu to the Cowboys for a fifth round pick in 2012. C’est la vie.

Pens To Replace Sykora In Lineup With Most Notorious Playoff Choker Not Named “Alexei”

The PG reports that Miroslav Satan will replace Petr Sykora in the Pens’ lineup for Game 5 tonight in Pittsburgh, which likely confirms the speculation that Sykora’s been playing hurt so far in this series (and likely for the couple weeks prior). A friend of mine suggested this switch before Game 4 but I was a bit skeptical, mostly because this is still Miroslav Satan we’re talking about and these are still the NHL Playoffs — the dude got booed out of Buffalo, which is like getting booed at home by St. Louis Cardinal fans — but Sykora’s impact on the series has been less than negligible, and if you’re gonna let him rest and want to reacclimate Satan to the pro club, this is about as non-risky of a playoff game as you’re gonna get.

Sykora has zero points in this series, and even though his power play duties have been limited, he’s still been missing one-timers left and right, which should be the one thing that even a slumping Sykora doesn’t do; Satan isn’t exactly Captain of the All-Physical Team, but swapping him in for injured-Sykora isn’t really a drop-off in terms of toughness, plus he should be rested and fired up to the point where he might actually hit some people. And by “people,” I mean, “pucks during warmups.”

GAME THREE: Flyers 6, Pens 3 – A Fine Chaotic Tapesty, Like A Jackson Pollock If You Took A Dump On It

My head is telling me to throw out some cliches about how I expected the Flyers to bounce back at home and play a desperate must-win game and that the Pens’ power play would come back to haunt them and that we hadn’t seen the Flyers’ stars play their best, but truly, I’m not sure if I believed any of these things; intellectually, perhaps, and rationally, but on a genuine gut level I really expected the Pens to seize the opportunity to bury Philly after their Game 2 collapse, which perhaps was part wishful thinking and part ignorance, but it simply didn’t happen for a number of reasons. And by “reasons” I mean “terrible things.”

Terrible Thing #1: Pens’ Defense. The Pens’ team D never made the trip to Philly, and simply didn’t bring the effort or cerebral competence to slow down the Flyers in the slightest bit. Jeff Carter looked like a kid screwing around at the end of a team scrimmage on his first goal; how is any player afforded that much time and space in the offensive zone, especially an opponent’s best scorer in the first period of a playoff game in which both teams clearly had to be fired up? Sure, Fleury coughed up a juicy rebound on the Briere-Giroux one-timer, but no one touched Briere or Giroux within about a week of that entire play. And then there’s Sergei Gonchar’s pathetic casualness that led to the short-handed goal, which brings me to (Awesome Transition Alert)…

Terrible Thing #2: The Power Play. Several volumes of encyclopedias have been written about the Pens’ power play this season, and while I don’t have a clear solution, their main problem becomes more obvious with every game: you can’t keep Crosby, Malkin, and Gonchar all out on the ice for a full two minutes. Those three players are unable to battle for loose pucks 45 seconds into power plays, rendering the second half of man advantages essentially worthless and immensely vulnerable to short-handed retaliations, plus because the three of them know they’re gonna be out for a full two minutes, they don’t play the first minute of the power play with the same intensity or sense of urgency that a playoff series against a dangerous, opportunistic penalty killing team absolutely requires. It’s one thing for the Thrashers to throw out Ilya Kovalchuk for the full two minutes or for Nik Lidstrom to man the point for an entire power play, but a team can’t have 3/5 of its unit on the ice for two full minutes; at some point, a fresh Tyler Kennedy or Jordan Staal chasing loose pucks and getting to the net are more valuable than a tired Malkin and Gonchar playing catch at the point and settling for a 40-foot one timer that gets blocked by seven dudes and immediately flies out of the zone.

Terrible Thing #3: Finishing. The Pens have controlled the majority of the 5-on-5 play in this series and at worst have never appeared overwhelmed for any extended periods, but they simply haven’t made Marty Biron work in any of the three games, including Game 1. They’ve shot countless quality opportunities directly into Biron’s chest, had more than their share of shots convincingly blocked, and far too many 2-on-2 breaks and lengthy cycling shifts (and power plays) have evaporated without Biron being forced to break a sweat.

Petr Sykora semi-fanned on a handful of chances in Game 3, which should be the one thing Sykora doesn’t do, even when he’s struggling; a friend of mine suggested possibly swapping Miro Satan into the lineup in Sykora’s place, which could provide a minor spark (and possibly a bigger spark when a rejuvinated Sykora returned) but given Sykora’s playoff experience and the fact that such a move would be a slap in the face of a productive player and likely cost him millions in the offseason, I don’t forsee it happening. Also, Miro Satan is Miro Satan and the playoffs are the playoffs.

Despite the Pens’ well-earned 6 on the scoreboard in Game 3, I’m extremely optimistic that they’ll rebound Tuesday night; the coaching staff will have a number of glaring corrections to make which the embarrassed Pens should absorb without hesitation, plus Fleury didn’t have his best game Sunday, the Pens won’t have to manufacture a sense of urgency this time, and the power play can’t…. I don’t know if I should type this… the power play can’t get any……. they only gave up one shorthanded goal………ahhhh I’ll say it — the Pens’ power play can’t possibly get any worse.

One Mike Richards shorthanded natural hat trick comin’ up!

Yo Momma’s So Ugly, If She Were A Period Of Hockey She’d Be The Third Period Of Last Night’s Lightning Game

Ordinarily when a team blows a third-period lead or comes close to it, you’ll hear hindsight clichés spewing from coaches and analysts along the lines of “we stopped being aggressive in the third” or “we needed to tighten up defensively” or some sort of theoretical failed adjustment to explain how a team went from leading to suddenly not leading.

Sometimes, though, as in the case of last night’s Pens/Lightning game, wouldn’t it have been nice to just NOT ALMOST BLOW A FOUR GOAL LEAD IN THE THIRD TO THE DAMN TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING? Forget failed adjustments, forget a sudden lack of aggressiveness, forget any explanations or excuses — why can’t this team play a normal frickin’ period of hockey in which they do not give up four goals?

It’d be like a friend of yours saying “I need to not gain 15 pounds by next week – how should I adjust my diet?” You’d answer, “You don’t have to do anything, just be normal and you’ll be fine” then you look over and he’s shoving a wedding cake in his mouth and you’re like “Why are you doing that?” and he goes “Ah, crap, I really failed to monitor my diet…” and you yell at him “That has nothing to do with it, just don’t eat a giant wedding cake this week, it’s really really simple…” and so on. Does that make any sense? It makes absolutely perfect sense? Ok cool.

For added patheticness, the Pens’ game-winning goal came on a Flyers-esque blatant goaltender interference play by Ruslan Fedotenko that wasn’t disallowed — every replay showed Fedotenko clearly impeding Ramo as Petr Sykora flipped the puck into the vacated left-60% of the net, a play which is only legal when it’s against Christobal Huet in Game 7 of an opening round Philly/Washington series.

The rest of the third period was so uniquely, bewilderingly awful that I don’t know how to interpret its implications on the Pens’ long-term state heading into the playoffs; if Fleury had let in three straight bad goals or Mark Eaton specifically got beat one-on-one twice or something, then I’d know what to be worried about, but the Pens’ third period ineptitude was so random and so extreme, it was almost amusing. The Lightning had sporadic 3-on-1s and 2-on-1s completely out of nowhere, sometimes breaking out after the puck was already over the Pens’ blue line and a defender would just spontaneously not be there, not to mention countless instances of Penguins getting outworked in the corners and in front of the net by massively inferior forwards. Fortunately, the Pens won’t have to go up against any firepower the likes of Jeff “Third Line Center McGee” Halpern in the postseason.

- Malkin has been unnervingly human the last few games – he had two assists tonight but wasn’t a dominant offensive presence, despite quarterbacking two lengthy 5-on-3s. Hopefully he’s not headed into the postseason Witness Protection Program again, Red Wings Series style.

- I would’ve advocated starting Garon against the Islanders Thursday, but after a puzzling third period for Fleury and the rest of the club, I wouldn’t mind seeing him back in net to try to regain his bearings in what should be an easy victory.

- Can Matt Cooke score a goal without ending up on the ice afterward? Does the act of scoring just require so much effort out of him that his muscles inevitably give way as soon as the red light goes off? Hopefully that doesn’t include his bowels.

- The third period was so excitingly bad, I didn’t have to write anything about the first period, which was probably the most boring period of Penguins hockey I’ve seen since Dan Bylsma took over.

- The Capitals and Flyers both won, the Hurricanes really won, and the Devils and Canadiens lost. The Pens inch ever-closer to a first round matchup with Jersey…any chance we can sign Aleksey Morozov to a seven-game contract?

3/15/09: Penguins 6, Bruins 4

The most glaring aspect of Sunday’s victory against the Bruins was that at no point did the Penguins appear to be overmatched by Boston; Tim Thomas made zero momentum-stealing saves, the Bruins’ special teams were entirely pedestrian, their much-lauded systemic team defense was nonexistent, and their deep, healthy offense managed only 25 shots to the Pens’ 34. Even taking account Boston’s season-high 8 shorthanded situations, absolutely nothing about this game indicated that the Penguins would be in over their heads in a playoff series against the East’s number one team.

As for those 8 shorthanded situations, today was the second straight horribly-officiated Penguins game, with the majority of the chincy calls both today and in the Ottawa game Saturday going in the Pens’ favor (though Petr Sykora’s even-up call today was exceptionally laughable). The Pens at least cashed in twice with the man-advantage today but I can’t imagine this run of crappy new-NHL calls going in their favor will keep up, unless, as every Flyers fan knows, the NHL is rigged to get Crosby into the playoffs (yet not rigged to get the damn Rangers and Maple Leafs and their giant cities with far more revenue poten….never mind, it’s an unwinnable argument.)

The four goals Boston did score were mostly the result of isolated fluky chances that they wasted no time burying; Brooks Orpik’s pass up the middle to Michael Ryder for Boston’s only power play goal was a pee-wee caliber lapse in judgment, and Sergei Gonchar showed flashes of the Gonchar of ’05 with his lazy, spastic drift into the corner on the Bruins’ shorthanded goal. Still, the Pens’ team defense never faced any crazy 20-shot-period onslaughts, their penalty kill appeared reasonably competent against the NHL’s #4 power play, and even after allowing the aforementioned gift-wrapped chances and receiving no life-raft saves from Mathieu Garon, they won this one in regulation and convincingly.

Boston has been going through a rough patch, going just 3-5 in the month of March with 2 of the 3 victories coming against the Islanders and Senators (who can’t beat the Senators, right?), perhaps indicating that they’re coasting a little with such a comfortable playoff spot. One can hardly judge anything from a single March regular season game, especially when both teams played the day before and were a bit wonky, but was that team we saw today seriously the best the East has to offer? The playoffs are now looking more up-for-grabs than even the most naive Penguin fans could have foreseen. It’s also impossible to be too afraid of a team that uses Mark Recchi on its top powerplay.

Oh also, just so we’re covered – NO GIVEBACKS, Anaheim.